Pak’s covert use of terrorism forces US to curtail aid, withhold Sharif’s invite

22-08-2015

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s
bottom-feeding on American aid is about to end unless it terminates its policy
of covertly using terrorism to further its frontiers, the Obama administration
has conveyed to Islamabad, amid indications that the US is also making Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif’s proposed visit to Washington conditional to meeting
this objective.

A key administration
official on Thursday said there has been no announcement about a Sharif visit
to Washington in October although the trip had been widely reported in the
Pakistani media based on briefings from diplomats in Islamabad.

“This is news to me. We
have not made any statements about that (Sharif's visit to Washington),” Peter
Lavoy, special assistant to the US president and senior director for South Asian
affairs at the national security council of the White House, told PTI. “If it
is pakka (final) you would be the first to hear.”

The rethink — or at
least holding back the announcement — of the visit comes after the
administration conveyed to Islamabad that it will not certify the effectiveness
of Pakistan counterterrorism operation to Congress to enable passage of the
Coalition Support Fund (CSF), the military reimbursement aid that goes towards
keeping Pakistan solvent.

As part of its frontier-state
ethos, Pakistan provides logistical support to US and coalition forces in
Afghanistan and in turn bills Washington for reimbursement. Pakistan has
extracted more than $13 billion from the US since the coalition forces swooped
into Afghanistan.

The CSF was scheduled
to end following the US drawdown from Afghanistan in December 2014, but the
Obama government extended the programme for another year through a legislation
containing additional conditions, including a requirement for certification by
the defence secretary that Pakistani military operations are rolling up
terrorist networks, including the Haqqani group in North Waziristan.

But true to form,
Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment has again suckered Washington
fooling the US by keeping the death from illnesses of Taliban supremo Mullah
Omar and Jalalludin Haqqani while trying to manage their succession.

The manipulation,
coming after Osama bin Laden being sheltered in Abbottabad, has further eroded
trust in a country with a long history of lying and dissembling. Although US
policy of forbearance is centered around its fear of Pakistan's collapse, that
tolerance is being tested in the face of the Pakistani military-intelligence's
serial malfeasance, including its continued patronage of terrorists associated
with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which six Americans died.

“The US move is
politically more damaging for Islamabad than its financial impact, which is
significant nevertheless for being an important source for narrowing the
current account deficit. More importantly, it coincided with the deterioration
in ties with Afghanistan because of Kabul's allegations that Islamabad
continued to harbor Taliban bases from where attacks were being launched,”
Karachi's Dawn newspaper, which first reported the rupture, said on Thursday.

“The US decision is
also likely to sour ties in the run-up to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's
scheduled visit to White House in October,” it added.

Pakistan’s economy is
both parlous and perilously-poised, despite frequent juggling of numbers in a
country that does not even conduct a regular census. With economic growth
barely matching projected population growth, it is reduced to living on aid and
remittances. Even aid is starting to dwindle after its familiar patrons in the
Gulf have pulled the plug and its sugar daddy China has not come through with
the expected bail-outs.

Desperate to keep the
US pipeline open, the Pakistani military, which runs the country's foreign
policy on behalf of the nominal civilian government, has been decimating its
civilian population with every-day air-strikes this week in North Waziristan,
announcing dozens of dead "militants" which no one is able to
authenticate due to lack of access.

However, the country's
continued patronage of terrorists on its eastern flank with India, including its
protection of UN designated terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman
Lakhvi, indicates there has been no fundamental change in its policy.

With Pakistan's
salience to American objectives declining in the context of US outreach to Iran
and the drawdown in Afghanistan, some scholars are now pressing for a review of
Washington's ties with Islamabad. In a Foreign Affairs magazine piece headlined
"An Unworthy Ally," C Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly have argued
that the time has come for Washington to "cut Pakistan loose," going
as far as to suggest punitive sanctions against Pakistani elite, including visa
denials to its top generals and officials who support terrorism.